New NHL policy offers some tweet relief

In trying to achieve a state of high dudgeon at the very idea of the National Hockey League imposing a restrictive social media policy on players for the coming season, there’s just one problem.

I’m in favour of it.

I wish my bosses would impose one on me.
There are dozens of players who use Twitter all the time, more who chime in less frequently. And other than some funny stuff from Phoenix’s journeyman forward Paul Bissonnette (@BizNasty2point0), a lively nugget now and then from Joffrey Lupul (@JLupul) and an occasional tempest in a teapot arising from some poor stiff who makes an unfortunate observation and then can’t figure out how to unsay it (see Dan Ellis), there doesn’t appear to be a lot of joy to be had, picking through the tidbits looking for actual news or insight.

Ellis is the former Tampa Bay backup goalie, latterly with Anaheim, who inflamed the Twitterverse last season by lamenting that making a lot of money didn’t buy happiness, sparking a flood of derisive tweets from readers under the hashtag #DanEllisProblems.

It was hilarious for a while, but then he got all huffy and cancelled his account, and one of the very few players who didn’t mostly tweet about personal charities or team-generated public appearances or what he had for lunch, went away.

Even BizNasty, who pretty much blazed the trail for his NHL brethren, had to reinvent himself for version 2.0, because the original was a little too raunchy and started exploring areas the Coyotes were uncomfortable with.

As for Facebook, well … sorry, can’t help you there. No doubt a whack of NHL players are using that, too, but despite a lot of “friend” requests, including from my daughters, I haven’t yet figured out how to turn the ignition on, and probably don’t want to engage in that much give-and-take, in case a lot of people I barely know somehow see it, too.

And yeah, I know there are privacy mechanisms available, but computer experts tell us all the time that every keystroke is preserved somewhere, forever, and one intemperate post can come back on you years later.

Ask Scarlett Johansson how happy she is about those nude photos of herself that she kept on her cellphone and thought were private, until hackers stole them and put them online, creating another case for the FBI’s Stupid Celebrities division.

The NHL would rather not have more than the usual number of its employees crossing into that territory, if it can be avoided.

Besides, the new rules aren’t terribly restrictive.

They just prohibit players tweeting or posting on Facebook before, during and after games or during practices, which isn’t really a problem, anyway, except for injured players or healthy scratches sitting in the press box during games, having to resist the urge to dish on what’s taking place on the ice.

Anyway, it’s not as though the public isn’t already well-conditioned to NHL teams’ efforts to control the message.

In Vancouver, as in Toronto and plenty of other markets, the team likes to ensure that it has a video or audio recording of every conversation taking place between players and media in the dressing room at any given time, has employees eavesdropping on all scrums and looking very nervous if ever an unsupervised one-on-one interview breaks out.

New restrictions this year on the standard media accreditation form for the Canucks, and no doubt other teams, include limiting the number of seconds of audio or video which may be extracted from the rink on a given day for the purpose of propagation, thus ensuring that the broadest source of information regarding the home team will increasingly become the homogenized version approved by the club for dissemination on its website.

Given the blandness of most players’ quotes at the best of times, perhaps it would be a fan’s secret avenue into the real stories if the lads were saving their really good stuff for Twitter or Facebook. They’re not.

But they still could, theoretically.

Just not when they’re supposed to be working.

Of course, the new rules might not take. Maybe hockey players will be like everyone else in offices around the world, who are warned against frivolous use of computers during working hours, then spend half the day sending and receiving jokes, and pictures of restaurants with lewd names, and YouTube links to talking animals.

Would the NHL really fine a healthy scratch sitting in the press box on game night and tweeting how much he loves I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas or speculating how many desserts Dustin Byfuglien had at the pre-game meal?

And why do I think BizNasty is going to be the one to push that envelope?